


Haunted

by cher, yuletide_archivist



Category: Vagrant Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashley in the Forest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> Written for cleflink

 

 

He was haunted. He had no other word for it; the state of his mind, the current mess of his heart and life. Nothing but confusion around him, and he could feel the sanity he tried to hold fighting him. There was some part of him that has always been mad, and longed for him to join with it. In his short, panic-filled dreams, it called him. Whispered sweet names and tempted with lips of silver, and lately had it grown unearthly beauty as well? He woke again, and this time the memory of soft claws was on him. Unearthly, broken, painful beauty, and Ashley flashed again on leather and skin, so much skin and metal. How was it possible he knew the man's eyes so well already? 

Soft blonde hair trailing down his chest as he woke; was he losing this battle? He felt the warm chuckle that shivered against his skin and wondered at the way even his dreams gained life in this place. Could the Dark get into his head? As easily as Sydney could, perhaps. 

There was something Ashley had to chase here. A clue and cause he needed to be. Riskbreaker. Riskbreaker. Riskbreaker. He couldn't afford this tenderly growing madness, but perhaps this was the key. 

Hide and run, run and hide. Fight. He heard the cries of Lea Monde's dead and shuddered, hand on his sword. He didn't want that when he died, and so he couldn't die. Lea Monde would make him immortal too. 

Fought beside him. Sydney had fought beside him, helped take down a common enemy, and why did that mean so much? Sydney's magic flowing into him, strengthening and healing him. Entirely different to his own magic, Ashley could feel some of Sydney come with the spells when they hit him. Could feel the way his own lips wanted to quirk and sneer, follow Sydney's barbs home. 

When this was all over, when the holes in his memory stopped singing the way that lilting voice made them, when the Cardinal was appeased, when the last Cold One was silent, maybe then Ashley _would_ follow Sydney home. 

Riskbreakers died or they went mad, but they never got to choose. Ashley would choose Sydney, and Sydney would let him pretend that the choice has been his. 

 


End file.
